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A half a year? Who's doing your work? You really need to find some
better quality craftsmen. It took me about a week to fabricate and
install the complete furling system. While I was doing the fabrication
and installation my wife was recutting and sewing the sail so we were
about a week, maybe ten days, from removing the original goose neck to
the shake down cruise with the new system.

That's not as long as I thought but it's still ten days too long because
you replaced a perfectly good system with an inferior one.

I guess that means poor old Joshua Slocum, the first man to sail
around the world alone, was some kind of wimp (gaff rig) All the
schooner fishermen on the grand banks for years were gaff rigged, The
America (maybe you've heard of that boat) was gaff rigged. Literally
thousands of junk rigged chinese vessels were trading as far as India
for centuries. The Clipper ships were not marconi rigged. I could go
on but why bother. You have, for some reason selected a relatively
recent sail form and decided that if an individual doesn't use that
form he aren't a sailor although that sail form has been in use for
such a tiny portion of the period in which sailing vessels have been
in use. Next you will be telling me that stainless is the only
material to rig your boat with even though it has been proven that
properly treated galvanized rigging lasts longer.

Get real, Buster. Old Josh didn't even have the availabilty of the
modern Marconi rig with Dacron polyesther sails. Nor did the Clipper
ships. And, yes, stainless steel is superior in just about every way to
old-fashioned galvanized standing rigging. You can go ahead and smear
all the tar you want on your inferior galvanized crap and brag about how
long it lasts but you won't impress anybody doing it.


Willie, you just plain don;t know what you are talking about. Why is
my roll up mainsail more likely to unroll then a rolled up jib and at
least 90 percent of the boats I see have roller furling jibs. Even
your swan 68 comes standard with a roller furling foresail.

Get real again. During storms jibs and jennys unroll all the time at
marinas and flog themselves to death. I've watched no fewer than four
boats at anchor with wind-ups that unrolled in a storm and flogged
themselves to shreds. If you aren't aware of this you'd better start
asking around. My Swan has sails that roll up inside the boom. That's
the only acceptable kind of roll-up to have.


Your figure of a 30% loss in efficiency is ridicules. If it were true
then my boat would sail substantially slower then it did with the
hanked on main but in fact it is impossible to tell the difference. In
fact, because I am able to carry the ideal amount of sail for wind
conditions, it appears that passages are actually quicker then they
were with the old mainsail.

I don't think it's so ridiculous. If your sail rolls up to an eight inch
diameter roll that means you have to set it four inches behind the mast.
That's a four inch slot to mess up the aerodynamics of the system. As
for telling the difference you wouldn't be able to unless you fitted
one, tested in in known winds. Then fitted the other and tested it in
known winds and then did a comparison. If you expect to tell by the seat
of the pants while sitting in the cockpit of a thirty ton boat then
you're daft.

f you use slab reefing, on a normal size cruising boat, you reef,
say
six feet of sail at a time. Is it too much? If you could have reefed
4
feet would you be going faster?

Nonsense, you're forgetting all about that big roll in the luff which
screws up the aerodynamics. You seem to have the old fashioned idea that
a sail is just surface area for the wind to push on. It is going
downwind but on the wind it becomes an airfoil and airfoils MUST have an
airfoil shape. A big sausage roll on the luff of is not an airfoil
shape. A large screwed up airfoil will provide less power than a smaller
proper airfoil.


You are right. and the reef points are about 6 feet apart, depending
on how big a boat you have. So you must reef in six foot slabs when in
fact it might be better to only reef 4 feet but because the reef
cringles are at six feet that is the distance you have to shorten
sail. The roller, on the other hand can let in or out the sail inches
at a time and thus can maintain the ideal sail area for the wind
force.

Nonsense yet again as I explained about. Your sausage sail even if
larger is less powerful than a proper smaller airfoil on points of sail
except downwind.


I fully agree with you about the storm sail and have such a track
fitted along with the appropriate halyards, sheets and other gear. I
also have a storm trisail with all of its rigging if required. The
roller system does not preclude the use of storm sails.

You have to take it down to get the damned thing out of the way, don't
you. I don't know about you but I sure don't want my storm trysail
chafing on some stupid wind-up hardware.

Why in God's world should it jam? Internally it is just a long piece
of plastic pipe rotating on a S.S. cable. As far as flogging I will
guarantee that I can change sail area faster then you can with your
slab reefing and with far less flogging. And without leaving the
cockpit.

EVERYBODY whose ever sailed with roll-ups for any length of time has had
jams and snags. It's part of the game.

If you don;t know enough about my boat to talk specifics then why did
you make the statement " the more I come to realize he has fallen prey
to and is a victim of too many, so-called, modern developments which
do nothing but hinder simple, safe and enjoyable cruising." ,as you
did above. Now you are admitting that you don't know anything about my
boat. So either your statement was simple footlessness or a lie.

That conclusion isn't hard to come by. One need only look at your being
in one place too long to be any kind of cruiser. One of the reasons
people stay too long is their boats are too much for them. Either too
large or too complicated or both together. Admit it, I'm right.


Now you tell me that "You need to become a little more realistic about
your method of operation." and if I ask you what are my methods of
operation you will admit that you don;t know anything about my methods
of operation. Is this more idiotic ranting or simply another lie?

Sorry but I thought it was a clear statement. Your method of operation
is to sit at a dock and partake of the Internet for months at a time.
That should speak for itself, shouldn't it?


With a proper sized cruising boat one never has a need for a windlass
or
electric winch. A proper sized cruising boat has systems one man can
handle using the power God gave him. If you can't hand your ground
tackle yourself then your boat's too big for you.


You are an idiot if you really mean that statement and it is not just
your usual bluster. If what you say is true then I assume that you
have no winches at all on your boat. No halyard winches; no sheet
winches; no anchor winch. Nothing but the strength in your arm.

You need to read it again, that's why I left it in above. Notice I said
electric winch. You jumped to saying I said all winches. I did not. I
have winches on my boat but they aren't electric. Arm power is all I
need. Two-speed manual winches generate lots of power. As for a windlass
I have none. I do have a very large manual sheet winch on the foredeck
that can be used to bust out a recalcitrant 35 pound Danforth but I can
easily hand the anchor once it's busted out.


Well, Willie, you just gave yourself away. You've got a 23, maybe 25
foot boat, maximum, because you can't handle genoa sheets on anything
bigger without winches. You use rope to anchor which might be all
right in some muddy creek but won't hack it in rocks and coral like we
have over here.

An invalid conclusion. I said electric winches. Manual winches are all
one needs for sheets, etc. Even the America's cup boats use only manual
winches and they have huge sails. As for anchor rodes I use chain and
rope. All chain rodes are totally unnecessary. And look what people who
use all chain rodes do. Then end up using a length of line as a snubber
so the chain doesn't snatch the fitting out of the deck.


You say "Their home is attuned to the sea and has limited systems
that only lubbers think they need."

Why, if your home is attuned to the sea do you have these systems that
only lubbers think they need? I thought you claimed to be a sailor and
now you are telling me that you have this lubberly equipment on your
boat.

What lubberly equipment are you talking about. Of course I have
navigation electonics and electric depth sounder and VHF and manual
winches and an aluminum mast and stainless steel standing rigging and
all the usual modern things. I have a head with a hand pump and a
stainless steel sink and autopilots. I'm no fool. But the things I have
work and I don't go tinkering with them and changing them out as if I
were some kind of expert engineer like you do. I sail and if something
works I maintain it and keep it working. If something won't work it gets
tossed overboard. That's the way it should be.


and arrive in another port almost unnoticed.

That might be true where you are but try it in this part of the world
and you will find your boat impounded and yourself in jail. You do not
leave a country and enter another country without complying with the
certain formalities. You obviously don't cruise foreign or I wouldn't
have to tell you that.

That's not what I meant and you know it. You're grasping at straws now.
I guess I should have realized I was talking to a nit-picker and said
unnoticed by most other cruising sailors. In other words they wake up
and see a new boat in the anchorage because they never saw or heard me
come in and anchor or come out from C and I and anchor. Satisfied now,
Buster?

Ah Ha! Now I know where you get all your weird ideas, you've been
reading Tristen Jones, haven't you?

I read several of his books years ago. He was a tall tale teller to be
sure. But, I think more like and identify with classical sailors the
likes of Marin-Marie, Alain Gerbault, Harry Pidgeon, and Robin
Knox-Johnston. Jones wasn't genuine enough. He was more a guy who sailed
so he could sell books than a sailor who wrote books between sailing.


Wilbur Hubbard